Tuesday, June 27, 2017

These forces will persist and wield considerable power as long as Colombia is not willing or capable of addressing the country’s need for agrarian reforms and pursuing sustainable economic development based on a more equitable distribution of wealth and income.

I added the emphasis. By coincidence, I just participated yesterday in a State Department roundtable on Colombia and the peace agreement. We discussed all kinds of different issues, but I felt that one overarching point was the question of political will. This is something political scientists don't study much because it's so hard to measure.

In the Colombian case, it's pretty simple: will Colombian politicians--even Santos supporters--tackle the hard questions of land reform, getting the necessary resources to remote areas in both the short and long terms, and in general filling the vast amounts of blank spaces with a state presence? There was lots of shrugging on that question.